Kahil

Kahil is the legendary forefather around whom the northern Beja knit their genealogies. The Bisharin trace themselves to him through the eponym Bishar, the Amarar through Amar, and the Ababda through Abbad, so that the great desert tribes are made brothers in a single ancestral tree. As so often in the Islamic period, the tradition grafts this Cushitic ancestor onto an Arab pedigree: some genealogists descend Kahil from Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, the Companion of the Prophet, while the Amarar instead claim him from al-Walid ibn al-Mughira. Sources differ on these connections, which are best understood as a folk charter of kinship among the Beja confederations rather than literal history.

Domains

• ancestry

Powers

• father the Beja lineages

Sources

• Kahil is the legendary common ancestor from whom the Bisharin, Amarar and Ababda reckon descent through their eponyms Bishar, Amar and Abbad; genealogists variously make him a descendant of Zubayr ibn al-Awwam or of al-Walid ibn al-Mughira, grafting the Beja onto an Arab pedigree.: H.A. MacMichael, A History of the Arabs in the Sudan (Cambridge University Press, 1922). (secondary); Andrew Paul, A History of the Beja Tribes of the Sudan (Cambridge University Press, 1954). (secondary)